We get 4 days outside of PTO to volunteer and give back to the community. My colleagues are extremely smart and I have so many people to learn from in and outside my department. You have leadership's ear if you ask for it. They will listen. They will respond. Puppet recently rolled out a refreshed values push that was voted on and shaped based on employee feedback. That's rare outside a tiny company. There are a lot of great communities and people here. It's not perfect, but it's open and I feel valued.

Cons

Staff who would prefer to work under Luke and still function as a start up aren't happy. That's not going to change. You can't have both global growth and still function as a small local company.

Advice to Management

Keep listening to the employees from interns to tenured staff. The values aren't worth anything if they aren't continually lived throughout Puppet.

Hi, this is Sanjay. I really appreciate you sharing your experience working at Puppet. The company is maturing and growing globally. From my perspective as CEO, the values exercise was important for us to go through and distill what's essential to our culture and how we want to treat each other. I'm proud of what our employees came up with. Employee feedback is critical to our success and I encourage you to keep it up. If you have additional comments, please feel free to send it to onlinefeedback@puppet.com. Thanks again for taking the time to let us know how we’re doing!... MoreLess

The company has a name that is widely known thanks to Luke and the early team members brilliant planning and execution. Great people, fun atmosphere and a ton of growth! Very big on diversity and helping the community.

Cons

Our CEO announced a program on January 31st to encourage donations to the ACLU and Puppet would match these donations up to 25k. This effort was spearheaded by our HR department. Reading between the lines, HR knows who is donating and who is not a "team player." This was extremely uncomfortable as I did not donate, but it was uncomfortable not to donate. This press was public, customers and prospects alike who follow Puppet may or may not have seen this -not a bonus for those who sell in the red states. Keep it internal, Puppet.In addition - Puppet offers an additional 50% referral bonus for employees who refer applicants that accept an offer who are either female or not white men. Equality is the best approach- who is the best candidate, no?

Advice to Management

If you want to sell in the red states, keep our great culture private. Focus on equality.

Hi, I’m Katie Abbott, VP of Legal and HR at Puppet. Thank you for taking time to share your feedback. We are proud of the work we do with the community (every employee gets 4 days off a year to volunteer at a charity of their choice) and our dedication to building a diverse workforce. As you mentioned, for a short period of time, we did double the referral bonus if we hired a diverse candidate. Our intentions were good, but we understand how this could be misinterpreted and this is no longer the referral policy. Our main focus has been and always will be to hire the best candidate for the job based on skills and experience. We encourage all referrals from employees. Thank you for being a part of our team, and please feel free to find me, or your HR Business Partner if you’d like to talk further about this or any other concerns you have. katie.abbott@puppet.com or onlinefeedback@puppet.com... MoreLess

Good existing technology product that is broadly used in the marketplace.

Cons

Their product doesn't seem to have a long lifespan from here going forward. Also there is a very very strong cultural problem at the company. It feels very tense in engineering and in sales with public discussions about issues. Not really sure where the company or product is headed. There were several people leaving per week during spring and summer of 2017.

The middle management class here is really dysfunctional. Many don't have basic qualifications for their position. Serious micromanagement and bullying is happening in certain pockets. Gender bias is very strong in key areas. Lots of women have left. product management is still fractured and immature. company is oriented toward managers at the expense of working staff, even paying higher bonuses to people who recruit ordinary managers than valuable engineers. Turnover high. I know several employees who applied for other positions and were denied and left.

Advice to Management

At this point the best thing would be to sell the company to a more mature organization. the management situation is so bad I don't think it can be fixed.

Hello, I'm Omri Gazitt, Chief Product Officer at Puppet. Thank you for sharing your feedback and experience. It's important for us to understand the concerns of every employee- from interns to leadership. Over the last few months, we've worked hard to address those concerns through our refreshed values initiatives in an attempt to make every Puppet employee feel comfortable, valued and safe. I would love to discuss this further with you. Please feel free to reach out to me directly at Omri@puppet.com or onlinefeedback@puppet.com. Thanks again for sharing.... MoreLess

Industry leading product, enthusiastic community and customer base, potential for game changing new products

Cons

It is definitely a time of change at Puppet, especially organizationally and especially at the highest levels... this is often an uncomfortable time for anyone who hasn't been through something similar in their career.

Advice to Management

Continue to be sensitive to the fear and anxiety, especially from our most tenured and talented (AND LOYAL!) employees but don't let it cripple our ability to accelerate into this next curve. This transformation isn't for everyone.

Thank you for your feedback. We continue to be proud of our industry leading product and our puppet community and customers. We will continue to change and evolve as an organization and we want our employees to feel connected and excited by the changes. As you know we are going through some work on the company values and spending a lot of time engaging employees for their feedback. I would encourage you & all puppet employees to share what matters in the forums we have created to hear from our employees. Heather Flynn Sr Director Global Talent Acquisition... MoreLess

- New CEO seems to know what he's doing, has put muscle behind existing efforts to run a better business. New CFO is also excellent.- Finally getting the business on track, potential to do really great things as a company.- The people. The bulk of employees are amazing and a joy to work with.- Great PTO. Decent benefits otherwise.- Beer on tap. You can bring your dog to work, if that's your thing. Catered Wednesday lunch. Convenient location downtown. Gym and parking in the building. Competitive salaries for Portland (but not for tech, generally).

Cons

- So desperate to fix their retention problem that they're willing to look the other way for misogynist problematic employees, do-nothing managers in several departments.- Tone-deaf on diversity issues, 4 female execs have left in the past 4 months and no one's talking about it. New head of HR is a huge liability to the company and has made sexist remarks and taken actions targeted at specific employees (arbitrarily making new benefits apply only to some employees and not others, in a seemingly punitive way). I'd expect lawsuits in the next year.- "Workplace" team and general office management is abysmal. Emphasis has been placed on hiring designers rather than actual facilities people - resulting in very expensive and swank areas that go months without cleaning, instagram-worthy spaces with year-old sticky handprints and dust. Employees take care of things themselves despite four or five people hired to do so.- "Top-heavy" hiring plan this past year (significantly more managers+ than lower-level individual contributors) has resulted in overworked managers who don't have time to manage, and no mid-level individual contributors to do actual work.

Advice to Management

- Take employee concerns seriously. Puppet can't afford it's current turnover rate.- Focus on real career advancement for employees, not random perks or arbitrary promotion without professional development.- Fire certain high-level employees, for cause. You know who they are.- Stop hiring so many people at the senior manager level and above, focus on lower level individuals who do the actual work rather than just talk about it. Puppet is incredibly top-heavy right now.